Heib - Jackpot EP

Heib - Jackpot EP
Even the most earnestly delivered historical re-visitations call forth questions of irony, but here it's done to the point of satire. Until now my knowledge of Jochen Heib's work rested on his skeletal productions for Kompakt—beefy, bare-bones Sähkö-on-steroids tools so po-faced it was difficult to form any opinion. With Jackpot his colours are revealed: retro acid with tongue deep in cheek.

The tinny electro rhythms, bleeps and arpeggios of the title track come straight from the can, and are plainly functional in a naked Sheffield manner. However, when the hammy lyrics ("Jack in the Box! Jack-Pot!") emerge—delivered with such contrived angst that T. Raumschmierre would cringe—Heib makes a mockery of his whole project. Perhaps that's his aim—acid can indeed sound silly—but it makes it difficult to swallow anything else Heib has to offer.

Fortunately the B-side is less overtly silly, more pleasantly quirky. "Cash on Acid" does what it says, pitting a garbled Johnny Cash sample ("I hurt myself today" from his cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt") against a vintage 303 squelch, and calls it a day. It's rather effective—simple, tough and direct—and it's easy to see why Kompakt love him. The result is close to the type of acid track that Mike Ink churned out by the hundreds in the mid-'90s. Concept-wise, file next to Und's "Rodeo."

Afterthought "Jaguar" is the best thing here, all gloomy minor-key tones and riffs reminiscent of Donnacha Costello's colour series, and all that came before. Shame, then, that it's merely a digital bonus.